Mencyclopaedia: Tommy Hilfiger

The All-American label Tommy Hilfiger steps back from the brink to open a new 8,000 square foot "flagship" store.

BY Luke Leitch |
02 December 2011

Tommy Hilfiger and his wife Dee Ocleppo.

Tommy Hilfiger autumn/winter 2011

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Inside the new Tommy Hilfiger store

Fair Isle jumper, £80

Were it not for Europe, the all-American brand Tommy Hilfiger would by now most likely have faded into fashion history. In its homeland, Hilfiger burned brightest in the mid-Nineties, when hip-hop performers such as Snoop Doggy Dogg wore his heavily-logoed clothes several sizes too large and revelled in the rhyming opportunities afforded by his name. Within a few years, however, the acquisitive hip-hoppers figured they could trigger bigger incomes by dropping Hilfiger and putting their own names on the clothes they wore. Sales dropped by 75 per cent, the share priced followed, and Hilfiger seemed a brand on the brink.

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Fast forward to yesterday. Tommy Hilfiger himself - his natty suit framed by monk-strap shoes and a side-swept fringe Alexa Chung would covet - was in London, on the Brompton Road, to open what marketers describe as the "global flagship" of an international network of more than 1,000 shops. He flew in from New York, where he lives with his second wife, Dee Ocleppo, and young son in a two-floor apartment in the Plaza Hotel, presumably partly purchased with his cut from last year's sale of the brand for (prepare yourself), $3 billion.

Eyeing the 8,000 square foot "flagship", Hilfiger said his first shop - which he opened in 1968, aged 18 - was probably the size of the Brompton Road changing rooms. That shop, he recalled twinkily, sold "bell-bottoms, incense and candles" (he glossed over the rolling-papers) and was in his home town of Elmira. These music-meets-fashion-meets-head-shops were called People's Palaces, but went bust in 1975. Ten years later, Hilfiger had acquired a wealthy backer and a jeans line which very few people knew about. That changed thanks to a huge billboard in Times Square that proclaimed him the menswear heir to Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren. The newspapers sneered at his arriviste chutzpah, but the jeans sold, and the money-spinning hip-hop-Hilfiger trend soon followed. But, Hilfiger told me recently, "Trends end - they always end. And when that one dropped off so did my business. I learned a tremendous lesson."

Fashion redemption was at hand, in Amsterdam. There, the European licensees of the Hilfiger brand-name were designing a conservative, Americana-referencing collection of preppy men's and women's clothes that led to that eye-watering $3 billion purchase by Phillips Van Heusen, one of the world's largest clothing conglomerates (it also owns Hilfiger's old billboard-mate, Calvin Klein).

The clothes are cleverly conventional - in Tommy-speak "aspirational and accessible" - and feature more elbow patches than a geography teachers' convention. The tailoring is sleekly natty yet, unusually for most fashion-led brands these days, cut generously on the body (ie. older, plumper gents could give it a try). Hilfiger's name is barely visible on most of the items. So a brand that seemed on the verge of collapse is now fully resuscitated and its founder - whose post-Van Heusen-deal job title is, would you believe, "visionary" - has probably justified his spot on that Times Square billboard.

Need to know

Best for:
A satisfyingly clear range of well-cut jeans, and some roomily tailored high-quality, mid-price jackets and coats.

Also notable:
The 'Drew' slipper, £45, is a down jacket for the toes. The perfect slob's Christmas present.

Find them at:
The new "flagship" is at 63-65 Brompton Road, London, but for effortless browsing see
uk.tommy.com